A Blacksburg Thought
Jeff Taylor | April 17, 2007, 8:58am
Or two.
To check my perfect 20/20 hindsight on the matter of a more pro-active response to the morning's first double murder, I tried to think of what the response would be to such an event at a large shopping mall or a theme park.
And I really couldn't convince myself that officials in charge in either of those two examples would not immediately move to lock down the area to the greatest extent possible.
Going forward, I would also like to know how and when the university's police special response team responded. Also, did depending on the campus wifi laptop grid to communicate events to students downplay the danger?
Many questions to be answered and, yes -- like some horrific sitcom -- lessons to be learned.
Gray Ghost | April 17, 2007, 10:43am | #
Since I was one of the people wondering why the campus wasn't "locked down", some comments. First, some caveats. As everyone's already noted, this is very early and facts are confused. Also, I fully expect all official parties to engage in serious ass-covering, which will further confuse figuring out who knew what and when and what should have been done.
Classes were cancelled at Va. Tech last year, when a man escaped from a nearby hospital jail ward, killed his guard and killed a Sheriff's officer who had spotted him near the campus. Authorities had no problem informing everyone that classes were cancelled and going building to building to try and find the guy.
In this instance, at least two people were shot in a dorm, and neither the shooter, nor the weapon were recovered at the scene. Nevertheless, few warnings were issued and no attempt was made to cancel classes. I understand that it's difficult, if not impossible to secure such a space. It's a lot harder than for a theme park or mall, so perhaps those examples aren't applicable.
Cancelling classes would seem a lot easier. When I was in college, it would seem natural for a double shooting in a dorm to lead to classes being cancelled, not for any safety reason but out of respect for the dead, "allowing time for the campus community to come together in grief", etc...(I went to undergrad in the Bay Area, if that helps). Have we become so used to this that a double homicide at our school just becomes water cooler fodder and an annoyance? ("jeez, what's all the police tape around Bancroft for? Will this bump our exam?"---things I could easily see myself saying at the time.)
I wonder if Va. Tech's reticence to cancel classes has anything to do with the previous incidents disrupting classes(bomb threats) in the prior two weeks?
Thoreau, you work in academia. Your university wouldn't have cancelled classes or at least sent out an e-mail, under the circa 7:30 a.m. facts we've learned this far? Certainly, my grad school cancelled classes for less pressing reasons. (faculty member received envelope w/ white powder, just after 9/11; everyone went bat shit, cipro for everyone in the office.)
jp's second/third paragraphs makes the most sense to me:
IMHO, based on what little I know so far, the university administration should have made an announcement (via email and whatever other means they had available), as soon as it became evident that the first shooting was not definitely a murder-suicide, that a shooting had occurred on campus and that the shooter was believed to be still at large. And maybe include that classes are canceled for the day.
That approach would at least have let students know that the situation was not normal. They could then decide on their own how best to handle themselves.
I'm not sure how you prevent something like this, if indeed it is possible in this country. The policy of allowing existing CCW permit holders to continue carry on campus, makes the most sense to me. As mediageek and LarryA have quoted, the crime rate from CCW holders is dramatically below the median. Most college students would be ineligible for CCW, being under 21, but certainly the TAs and profs would qualify. I'm not saying that concealed carry would have stopped this tragedy, but it may have mitigated it. I acknowledge that those chances of mitigation are incredibly small.
So what do we do to prevent this sort of thing happening again? Finals and dissertation deadlines are coming up after all, and it's easy to imagine some loser wanting to copy this tragedy.
LarryA | April 17, 2007, 12:30pm | #
Texas state law specifically carves out hospitals as "no-carry" zones.
Actually, no. Sort of. PC 46.035(b)(4) says you can’t carry in a hospital. PC 46.035(i) says PC 46.035(b)(4) “does not apply” unless a 30.06 sign is posted. You
can carry in any hospital that isn’t posted. (Or you receive oral or written 30.06 warning.)
Note that the above applies to visitors. Hospitals can limit employee carrying by almost any means.
30.06 specs out the sign that is good against permit holders as well.
Quibble: 30.06 applies
only to permit holders.
Given the way mass killings like this end for the shooter, the deterrence argument seems unconvincing.
Laws against guns or killing certainly don’t deter them, given that they don’t intend to live long enough to stand trial. And avoiding uniforms takes care of most of the immediate law enforcement deterrence.
But suppose a multiple murderer wants to amass a high body count and “go out in a blaze of glory.” Or at least infamy. The last thing he wants is for the news story to be written about a CHL who killed some guy that shot two people before he was stopped.
Also mass killings are so rare that you really can't draw any meaningful conclusions from where they occur.
When the correlation gets over 95% even a few cases are significant.
R.C. do you think that the sign actually used in TX to bar carry is due to the intent of the business owner to allow only licensed concealed carry or is it due to ignorance of the difference in sign types?
In my experience the PC 30.05 signs were mostly posted during the initial reaction to concealed carry, 1995-1996. Back then everybody expected all of us camo-clad licensees would be tromping around in our muddy boots and spitting tobacco everywhere, generally disrupting business. By 12/96 that pretty much went away.
This was before 1997 when 30.06 was passed and the 30.05 signs no longer applied to CHLs. They just have never been replaced or removed.
It was interesting that most of the businesses that initially posted "no gun" signs were local. Most national chains had experience in other states where concealed carry was established, and didn't bother.
The exception is some urban county/big city governments, which remain paranoid even after eleven years.
Other Matt | April 17, 2007, 1:16pm | #
Having run drills with a shot timer, I know I can draw and accurately put rounds on a target at 7 yards in that amount of time.
Mediageek-We've got to get you down
home to get to at least two or three in that time...
And now on to Joe...
He had a bullet-holder-thingie (no, I really don't care about my profile among gun geeks) that held more rounds than the recently-lapsed "assault weapons ban" allowed - a 12 (or 15?) round clip instead of a 10 round one. Would the body count be lower if he'd had to reload a little more often? We won't ever know - any more than we'll know what would have happened if the Virginia legislature had allowed CCW-licensees to walk around armed.
Well, actually, I'm less so much of a "gun geek" as a prior military man. I'd obviously like some measure of respect for trying to help you not appear ignorant, but if you want to be viewed an ass, you obviously need no help from me.
NY limits to 10 rounds. MerryLand limits to 20 for whatever kind of firearm. In IDPA, I can say there is a slight difference in times when using a 10 round mag, and me using my stock 18 round (for those people that know firearms this seems strange, but the CZ SP-01 stock mag is 18 round)magazines. However, if a guy has two pistols and reloading correctly, you won't get a jump on him regardless. You always reload in a tactical situation before you run dry, so there's always one in the chamber. You have a second gun which does have rounds left.
If he's dropping mags, he maybe would have had another 2 seconds every reload, so there would be three instead of two for every 30 rounds fired. Since he fired for "a minute and a half" per the news reports, and presumably fired in excess of 100 rounds there were reloads involved. Lets say 300 for talking purposes as it is divisible by thirty, that would be 10 reloads. In that 10 reloads, saving 2 seconds apiece, you would assume there would be 20 seconds for people to get away. However, you'd also have to assume that he ran both guns dry, and couldn't fire on someone moving until he reloaded, as it wasn't a continuous 20 seconds. Take it to five round mags, or 3, doesn't matter, he could just have more guns on him. Occasionally you see this in westerns, where a guy would carry a number of guns as they took longer to reload.
There's a workaround for everything, if you want to find it, the point is now we're hearing this guy had a history of disturbing writing, depression, etc. It simply isn't about firearms.
